Join the party Saturday, April 28, as people around the globe take aim at the heavens for Astronomy Day. This annual event was begun in 1973 by California astronomer Doug Berger, who organized a drive to set up telescopes along city sidewalks and other public spaces so that ordinary people could better appreciate the night sky. With four of the five naked-eye planets visible along with the near-first-quarter moon, the evening shouldn’t disappoint.
Even before sunset,...

Oscar is a baby chimpanzee, living a blissful life in the jungles of Uganda. His mom dotes on him. He romps with other baby chimps during upbeat musical sequences.
But in the distance the evil Scar and his hoard of chimp raiders threaten Oscar’s idyllic life.
If it sounds like a Disney movie, it is.
The latest documentary from Disneynature, Chimpanzee, makes a monkey out of the term documentary. This is nature without death. This...

1993
• New Bay Times born April 22 to Sandra Olivetti Martin, Bill Lambrecht and Alex Knoll and delivered every two weeks.
• Bill Burton, just retired from the Evening Sun, hires on as outdoors columnist. New Bay Times stock soars.
• Inaugural issue of Bay Weekly’s summer guide, 101 Ways to Have Fun.
• No longer black and white and read all over; our first spot color (on front and back covers) is green.
• Rampant diseases MSX...

For 38 years, local inventor Bill Gingras will never get lost. The compass he has painted on the driveway points him in the direction of the outside world, while the large spherical globe on his front lawn denotes home base.
Throughout his life, this man of invention has created his own direction. At 82, the owner of the first — or maybe second — all-electric Nissan Leaf in Chesapeake Country is still pointing the way to the future.
He’s...

Changing the world begins with small steps even a third grader can manage

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It’s not.
–Dr. Seuss: The Lorax
Sitting on the floor of her classroom at Eagle Cove School, surrounded by third graders, Vicki Dabrowka doesn’t look like the green warrior she is. Her campaign begins with deceptively small steps.
Every Friday, her third graders collect empty Capri Sun packages from the other classrooms in the elementary school...

Hundreds have helped us keep Bay Weekly in your hands these 958 issues

Nine-hundred fifty-eight issues in 19 years would be heavy lifting, were it not for all the people who’ve carried part of the load of Bay Weekly since our birth as New Bay Times on Earth Day, April 22, 1993.
Each year at this time, I page back through our 19 leather-bound volume books. Each one of them making heavy lifting — not only for all the newsprint pressed in them, nor for all the words typed on that yellowing paper. The memories are heavier still, revived...

The sound of the rushing water was tranquilizing as my cast quartered downstream and settled softly. The small fly touched and disappeared underwater just above the churning white cauldron where I hoped some shad might be frisking. My line immediately snapped tight, and my energy flowed back.
I held the line firmly with my hand for just an instant to be sure of a good hook-set. Then the fly line was ripped roughly through my fingers as a graceful silvery rocket shot out of...

The new moon in the nether hours between Friday and Saturday leaves this weekend’s night skies clear for the annual Lyrid meteor shower, which peaks Saturday-Sunday.
While the Lyrids seldom storm like the Perseids and the Geminids, they are reliable stalwarts, with recorded sightings dating back in China more than 2,500 years. The Lyrids, producing long glowing trails that can last several seconds, range between 10 to 20 meteors an hour. Every so often, however, they...

When moving trees and shrubs, if you interfere with one, leave the other alone

When you’re transplanting a tree or shrub, leave the branches alone. Once upon a time, gardening wisdom advised pruning back the branches to compensate for the roots lost when the plant was dug. I have been convinced for some time that this practice had been laid to rest, until I recently heard a garden expert on the radio recommend it to a listener who had called for advice.
The science of horticulture has discredited this practice, whether the plant is dug with a...

The side porch of our home in northern Calvert County faces east. It’s a great place to have our morning coffee and feel the first warm rays of the sun. It’s also where my wife sets out the hummingbird feeders, so we get to watch the high-speed high jinks of these delicate little birds.
As our birds return from Mexico, each year one or two hovers around the very spot where the feeders hang, peeking through the screen as if to say, Okay, I’m back. I know you...